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Nadia sheathed her sword and slipped on her gloves, all while moving back slowly. The banister, which had somehow survived her first jump onto it, came to her rescue once again. She jumped up and kicked off it with her right foot before slamming the left one onto the werewolf’s head. Tresson twisted with the impact and hit the wall before he slumped down, yet he grabbed her leg in a move that was lucky, not skilled.
Nadia hit the stairs and groaned in pain, but still reached for the silver chain on her belt. Tresson snarled and growled, his claws digging into her leg while he tried getting up properly to kill her. Nadia kicked him hard in the neck with her right leg before she did the opposite of what he expected and moved down toward him. There, she twirled the silver chain around his neck. She yanked hard and his desperate growl was choked out of him. He lifted his large body in despair and moved back, almost crushing her under his weight, but Nadia was faster. She yanked her silver knife from his bloody eye socket and, with no hesitation, slit his throat. The silver chain slid into the wound, and it didn’t take long after that.
Nadia remained motionless until she was sure he wouldn’t attack anymore.
She breathed hard then, gasping for air under the lifeless beast. He remained in his werewolf state even after death.
She couldn’t waste time heaving for air, though. She was still inside the Shade, which was controlled by the hybrids. Someone could have heard something. Or someone could come by to check on Tresson. Nadia pushed and heaved to get the dead beast off her, the sharp edges of the stairs gnawing into her back. She gasped in relief when she was free and then noticed something glinting in the were’s fur, right under his chin. Nadia bent and fished out an amulet from his surprisingly soft fur.
“Huh,” she uttered at the sight of a dormant Anemoi newt amulet. He hadn’t activated it. Nadia figured it was best to take it rather than have it fall in the hands of someone else of Kassemyr’s people, so she yanked it lose.
Removing her dagger from the body too, she proceeded toward the room she was really after, an old living room. She wiped down her weapons on her way while controlling her breathing. When she opened the door, she nodded to herself. The room was filled with various equipment, magical and otherwise. Nadia stared at it, not in shock or surprise, but attempting to locate what she was after. A magical stabilizer. Most of what lay before her in piles had been taken from Jade Mansion after Lerah the witch, had died. Apparently, she had been the mastermind behind Kassemyr’s weapons, and a Ghost had spied on the place when everything had been taken away in large trucks. Unfortunately, he’d not been able to follow since a werewolf guard had come across him. Now, though, Nadia’s days of tracking this load of equipment had paid off. At least she hoped it had.
Small, glowing orbs, was how Harmiston had described them, and Nadia noticed the containers of harvested pure force under some stacked chairs. Whoever had stuck the boxes with them there must have had no clue what they were.
Nadia went over and took two. Harmiston only needed one, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a spare.
“This has better be worth it, Harm,” she whispered and pocketed them and then noticed several amulets placed on a stack of papers on top of a rickety table. Anemoi newt amulets. She remembered the clinking noise when Darrow had handed Tresson something she couldn’t see. She took them and the same noise came when the amulets moved against each other. Nadia had no idea why Darrow would hide such useful tools here, but she decided to take them. If anything, they might distract from what she’d really come to steal.
Nadia pocketed the amulets and then noticed something else. Something that tugged at her mind. A small metal container shaped like oval, flattened disks only thicker. They reminded her of water-rolled stones. On one side was something akin to glass, and on the top a flat button. Nadia pressed one, and instantly hissed, closed her eyes, and dropped the thing on the floor. She opened her eyes and blinked hard. She knew what it was. The smaller devices with silver light. Useful against weres and vamps of all kinds. Including her and a few Ghosts too. Nadia thought it through for a couple of seconds, and then grabbed the box and went outside.
The Shade was as unfriendly to the mind out in the open as inside the structures it had swallowed. She looked to the city, which was covered in darkness still, the night up on the surface reflected to the buildings and farmlands below.
Nadia knelt by an old stack of roof shingles near the wall. She dug a hole with her hands and buried the box with the silver light devices. She knew the Ghosts wanted them, but she didn’t want this magic to get out. It could be used against many good people.
When done, she arose, brushing off her hands. She couldn’t hear or smell any hybrid nearby and decided on the route back to the city which provided the least chance of detection.
That was when the soft rustle of a shoe on sand reached her ears.
Nadia backed up against the house and ran around it in the opposite direction she’d come. Just when she reached the final corner of the other side from where she’d been, she saw, not a hybrid bearing down on her, but a smaller figure, dark and fast, disappearing behind a house farther away, closer to the city than she was.
Nadia pressed her lips together, hoping this wasn’t another child spirit. This time, she didn’t have time to hunt it down.
Chapter 2
Nadia heard the buzz of several voices before she opened the door to Harmiston’s apartment inside the building opposite the Cube. She’d already passed by hidden guards and security measures to reach the door and the fact that people were talking instead of being quiet meant she was seen as one of the group inside.
She was met with neutral nods of greetings from the Ghosts in there, and some raised eyebrows from the civilians.
“Nadia?” Victoria said and popped out of the kitchen with a large cup in one hand and a notepad in the other. She had tied her chestnut hair back in a tight braid and wore simpler clothes than she would at court, a pair of dark pants, a light blouse, and a red cardigan that reached her knees. Her smile froze at the sight of Nadia’s dusty and bloodstained clothes. “Are you … in one piece?”
Nadia looked down at her clothes. “It’s not my blood.”
“Smells like werewolf blood,” Sentinel Ayd commented, passing them by on her way to the kitchen. The half-breed lynx shifter could discern that to such a level of detail.
“I take it things went as planned, then?” Victoria asked, stepping out of the way of another Ghost. Despite working with the Ghosts for the last few weeks, she still seemed a bit taken aback by their doings. She’d grown up in the Royal Palace and been schooled with the Wraiths. She lived among the Ghosts now, but had never truly seen evidence of the more gritty part of either Queen’s guards’ duties.
“Not exactly, as you can see.” Nadia smiled a tight-lipped smile. “I’m fine, though, Victoria. As you can also see.”
Victoria nodded and then indicated the kitchen. “Harmiston is waiting for you. He was overly excited about the new bomb, but seems to have lost some of his exuberance over the last couple of hours.”
Nadia followed her friend into the kitchen, where they had to step around three Ghosts in the cramped space. Harmiston’s apartment had become crowded over the last few weeks. Despite its close proximity to both the Cube and the Palace, which were now inhabited by both Kassemyr and his hybrids, Nadia and Harmiston had begun their work there, and it had grown from there. Queen Isona and her advisors had agreed that a base in Agartha was necessary and since they already had a small one, the Ghosts and the civilians helping, had gone there and then continued to work from there.
They had expanded, though. It had been necessary and the neighbors in the apartment next door had been compensated, or at least would be should the Queen be able to retake her seat of power. They’d been escorted back to Fallen Oaks by a few Ghosts one night, where they couldn’t be discovered by Kassemyr’s followers and reveal anything. They were good folk, but the Ghosts didn’t take any chances these days.
Harmiston had been hard at work after that. He’d learned new spells to create a doorway between the apartments that could be concealed should anyone not belonging to their group start snooping. The doorway, which at the moment simply resembled an opening for a missing door, was placed next to his fridge.
Nadia and Victoria passed through and entered a bedroom. There, a few Ghosts lay sleeping, fully dressed on the large bed, a few on mattresses on the floor. They had other places around the city too, but were fairly rootless these days and slept where they could, when they could.
